


Saying I Love You

by Comedia



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-12
Updated: 2012-09-12
Packaged: 2017-11-14 01:52:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 714
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/510049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Comedia/pseuds/Comedia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes when you say something over and over it loses its meaning. Oh, and there’s EC spoilers.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Saying I Love You

The more you say something the more it loses its meaning. As time goes by you repeat it over and over, not really thinking about what you’re actually saying.

Like “yes sir”. Standing at attention, dozens of new recruits saluting – young and eager and a little scared – it’s powerful. Yes sir. It quickens the heartbeat and they’re not even heading into battle. As years go by it becomes a habit and Shepard has found himself saying it at all kinds of weird occasions.

“Hey Loco, pass the salt?”

“Yes sir.”

James kept bringing it up for weeks, but thing is that all of them do the same mistake sooner or later. Once the novelty wears off – once you get used to encountering legendary Admirals on a, pretty much, daily basis – it becomes just another way of saying “yeah, sure”.

Then there’s “I should go”, a phrase Garrus likes to call a “Classic Shepard”. It was after Akuze, and he still wasn’t sure how to deal with it. Suddenly everyone wanted to talk to him, either to tell him how they would’ve handled the situation better or what a damn good soldier he’d been. Getting out of that kind of conversation isn’t easy, and he’d never been a smooth-talker to begin with. He spent hours listening to soldiers he’d never meet again, all of them explaining how he could’ve done this or that, or patting him on the back.

Kind of like a tidal wave, it had been building inside him for a long time as he kept his jaws clenched to hold the words back, and then finally…

“I should go.”

All the pent up frustration and nervousness released at once. It was never quite as hard to leave someone again. After a while it became his way of ending most kinds of conversations, and as time passed it ended up as just another way of saying “bye”. The meaning it used to have, the challenge it used to represent, was gone.

So when it came to saying “I love you” he hesitated. One time he’d told Kaidan:

“Looking at you is like looking at a newly discovered species; kind of bizarre and creepy, but really fascinating.”

Kaidan had called him a primitive – using his best Javik impression – and laughed.  
It was that feeling of not being able to breathe when Kaidan smiled, and Shepard’s heart beating so fast at the sound of his laughter that he sometimes worried the implants would overheat. It was feeling like he’d been traveling the vast of space for years and finally having found a soft place to land.

And therefore he waited. It had to be at the right moment, and he couldn’t allow it to become a habit. In the end he waited too long. Things never go as planned, something he should’ve learned a long time ago, and as they rushed for the beam he knew it wasn’t going to work out. At least not the way they planned.

It was rushed and desperate, Kaidan’s eyes wide and his voice breathless as he asked Shepard not to leave him behind.

Know that I’ll love you, always.

He didn’t expect to survive and they both knew that. It wasn’t what he wanted for them, but it’s what they got; a farewell more than anything else and a caress supposed to say everything he had been holding back.

Shepard had never considered himself a romantic, in fact he’d made fun of Kaidan’s romantic side more than once. But as the hospital doors had opened to reveal a pair of wide, brown eyes all he could say was those three words.

“I love you.”

If anything it had meant even more the second time. It wasn’t saying good bye, it was welcoming Kaidan back into his life and holding on as hard as he possibly could.

He eventually found out that it never loses its meaning the way other words and phrases do.  
But Shepard will always be Shepard, so he’ll try out new pick-up lines and all kinds of clever compliments, but sometimes it’s kind of awkward – and more than a mouthful – to say “every time you’re near it’s like getting spaced but in a good way” and those times “I love you” is more than enough.


End file.
